


it all catches up to me (all the time)

by copperiisulfate



Category: K (Anime)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-20
Updated: 2017-10-20
Packaged: 2019-01-19 12:20:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12410208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/copperiisulfate/pseuds/copperiisulfate
Summary: And it’s falling apart, all of it; you can see it before your eyes. He thinks that you can’t. Sometimes, you prefer to let him.





	it all catches up to me (all the time)

**Author's Note:**

> set somewhere around season one.

You climb the steps and find the door to Anna’s room part-way open, dim light illuminating a strip of the wooden hallway floor. Pushing past the door reveals her small frame, tucked in and fast asleep. 

Beside her, Kusanagi is nodding off in a chair too small for his lanky limbs and can’t possibly be comfortable. He’s scrunched up awkwardly with his back slumped, arms loosely crossed, as if to keep himself warm. It’s the look of someone bone-tired who finally sat down after hours on his feet and forgot how to get up again. 

(It’s the look of someone waiting.)

The sight stings somewhere below your rib cage. It’s always been difficult to put a finger on it but, here–well.

(It's been happening more than it used to–watching the clocks at the bars strike midnight, holding your liquor, drawing it out, slow, to kill the time. 

Half past one then two and you could feel your insides twist a little with–well–there weren’t many good words for it. 

There was the knowledge that if you got back late enough, it would be after Bar Homra’s last call. It’s hard to say when this became–not easy, never easy–but, somehow, _easier_.)

He makes a sound when the floorboards creak beneath your feet but doesn’t move or open his eyes. 

Unthinking, you drape your coat over him and it earns you a mumbled sound, something of a “Welcome home.”

There’s another instinct that chases it, sudden and unbidden, to brush his hair away from his face, to kiss him even, except–you do neither of these things.

“If you’re staying,” you say to him, throat all too dry, “do it properly. Bed next door’s all yours.”

“And you?” he asks, around a yawn.

“There’s space downstairs.”

You’re already halfway out the door but can’t help but wince when he sounds clearer, more awake, says, decisive, “Not kicking you out of your own room.” 

 _(–your room,_ you think.

 _What’s mine is yours –_ an echo, a past life.

 _It didn’t used to be such a fucking mess,_ you think.

 _Three guesses as to who turned it into one_ , counters the voice inside your head that sounds so much like his, and you wonder if those things will ever truly be separable.)

You’re frozen, glued to your spot as he gets out of the chair, walks over, slings your coat back over your shoulder. 

“Come off it,” he says, rubbing an eye. “Gonna head home.”

And you say, “Stay,” before you can quite catch yourself.

Never mind that you  _hate_  that there has come a time when the thought even crosses you to catch yourself.

He walks you both out of Anna’s room and into yours before he says, with a twist of a smile, “That mean we’re finally gonna talk about it?”

You do not do him the disservice of playing dumb, just sit yourself on the bed and look up at the sight of him, illuminated by little more than streetlights from your window– _his_ window, if you’re going there. _His bar. His life--_ that you've kept hijacking endlessly and haven't been able to stop. Don't know how to stop.

"It’s half past two in the morning," you say instead.

The scant light makes all his angles harsher, colder. He snorts a laugh, a quiet puff of air, which sounds sharper than it is, jagged, cutting through the night. “That’s mattered to you before, has it?”

“Come out with it,” you exhale, feeling the night–everything–suddenly catch up, deep in your bones. “No games under this roof. Isn’t that what you used to say?”

He falters for a moment then deflates altogether, shakes his head, lets out a breath. “Move over,” he says. “I’m fucking _exhausted_.”

You kick off your shoes and your jeans and your extra layers and you listen.

Your front is to his back and you know that he knows that this isn’t exactly a resolution, or even progress–whatever that means, but it’s something, _easier_ , familiar, a language you like to pretend you can work with when words do no good.

You’ve got your arm barely touching his waist as you ask, close to his ear, “This okay?”

He leans further back into you in response, takes your forearm with his hand and pulls it around himself. A beat passes before he says, barely a whisper, “Can’t decide if I'm mad or a little glad that you feel you gotta ask.”

And it’s falling apart, all of it; you can see it before your eyes. He thinks that you can’t. Sometimes, you prefer to let him.

You want to–try to--chuckle against the back of his neck but your lungs and throat feel full of sand. You go in for a lungful of air anyway, breathing in and then out then in again, as his fingers weave through yours and tighten their hold.

You’re shaking and he’s turning and facing you, drawing you closer, nose to nose, forehead to forehead, the hand holding yours now threaded into your hair.

“Breathe,” he says, clear and steady, and breathes himself, like a mirror, like he’s done for years every time you’ve felt like crawling out of your skin and Totsuka or Anna or–you hate to think it but even Munakata–among other tangible and concrete reminders of your humanity aren’t around to keep the aura at bay.

And slowly, slowly, you come back to earth or something like it, and open your eyes to see the look in his. 

It’s a look that makes you want to recede so far into yourself that you never have to put anyone through this again, not like you have been, again and again.

“Hey,” he says, quietly, into the small space between you. “I know I've been giving you a hard time.”

“ _Don’t_ ,” you can’t help but hiss, practically beg. On top of everything else, you cannot–will not take an apology, not from him.

And before he can say or do or hopefully even feel anything further, you kiss him, a subtle storm of apology and gratitude, perpetually belated and perpetually preemptive. Perhaps, you think, with some cruel humour, the silver lining in itself is that it won’t be for long. 

(Most of the time, it’s not death you fear. It’s the residue of all of this; it's everything else.)   

He pulls away from you eventually, swipes quickly at his eyes and it’s too close for you to pretend not to notice. He doesn’t turn away, doesn’t try to hide it, and, maybe, a part of you is glad. 

Maybe, you need this, both of you. You’ve tiptoed too long around it, the raw ugliness of what everything has become, will continue to become, and has turned you into. Maybe, you need to see it and be it in order to exist in spite of it, for as long as the two of you will be allowed to.

“Sometimes,” you say, at last, out loud. “It's easier, to stay away, from this, from you.”

“I know,” he says.

“It’s not because of you.”

“Liar,” he says, but not with any venom at all.

“But not why you’d think,” you amend.

“Sometimes I can’t bear to be around you either,” he admits in turn. “Sometimes, I think it would be better to leave before you get back, to get practiced in it, get used to missing you now–”

“–rather than later,” you finish for him.

“But I'm not doing that to myself tonight,” he says. 

 _Wish you never had to_ , is what you want to tell him, though it’s rather pointless and you’re well aware.

No, you think, you’re not afraid of death, not afraid of facing yours at any rate.

Still, if you could only have salvaged a life, an eternity, carved it out from another kinder dimension, and given it to him for safekeeping–

Well, sometimes, in these quiet moments, you still wish you were made up of something that could have managed that. 

**Author's Note:**

> title and everything borrowed from the national's _guilty party_ which is an excellent song to listen to if you ever wanna be real sad for a long time.
> 
> my baseline for writing them in canon-verse is almost always in this sort of strained ambiguously established relationship setting and this is no different.


End file.
